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The best advice you can get is to take an holistic approach and utilise as much of the data you have available as possible. Along with the various tools (the links provided by Fergal cover them well), don't forget the simple (but very important) steps of listening to how customers talk about the product/service, watching/analysing what they say in mails and forum discussions, use your analytics to monitor on-site search and track general trends in the related industries.

As you're operating a forum will be dependant on user generated content for much of the site (and able to pick up a lot of long tail traffic as a result), you'll need to focus your optimisation on a relatively narrow field in the areas where you are in control. With any optimisation efforts, the key is to ensure you're targeting the right terms. The only way to be sure of this is to monitor the results (not just the traffic, but also the engagement and conversions of that traffic) and see what works for your users and your site. If you're monitoring conversions via analytics (if not, you should be and would be the most beneficial 'next step' you could take) you'll already have a lot of data available with which to back up your decisions.

The best advice you can get is to take an holistic approach and utilise as much of the data you have available as possible. Along with the various tools (the links provided by Fergal cover them well), don't forget the simple (but very important) steps of listening to how customers talk about the product/service, watching/analysing what they say in mails and forum discussions, use your analytics to monitor on-site search and track general trends in the related industries.

As you're operating a forum will be dependant on user generated content for much of the site (and able to pick up a lot of long tail traffic as a result), you'll need to focus your optimisation on a relatively narrow field in the areas where you are in control. With any optimisation efforts, the key is to ensure you're targeting the right terms. The only way to be sure of this is to monitor the results (not just the traffic, but also the engagement and conversions of that traffic) and see what works for your users and your site. If you're monitoring conversions via analytics (if not, you should be and would be the most beneficial 'next step' you could take) you'll already have a lot of data available with which to back up your decisions.

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Yeah I have Google Analytics installed and is proving useful, I am considering Market Samurai, do you have experience of this?

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Be sure to take a little time here to ensure you're getting the right information and in the most actionable way. I'm always shocked at the number of sites that install analytics, spend quite a lot of time reviewing the figures, but leave it with the standard default setup and totally miss out on the main benefits of the tool. Decide on the most meaningful KPIs for you to measure performance (e.g. registrations, comments, unique page views, contact forms, etc. - it can pretty much be anything, only you know what's important to your business), ensure you're tracking the relevant goals/events, use advanced segments to provide the most pertinent information at a glance and then optimise your efforts comparing the cost of a campaign (be it financial or resources) against the uplift achieved against the key goals (you can go as far as applying a notional value to each goal if it makes the feedback more tangible and if you have the data to construct ballpark values).

I've tried, at least at a high level, most of the tools out there. MSamurai is pretty good, although I do find their upsell/cross-sell tactics a little on the heavy handed side (e.g. a touch on the spammy side for my own tastes).

As for the tool itself, what are you looking to achieve from it? If it's purely for keyword research, MS may suit your needs but be sure to try out the free trial before you purchase... personally, I'd suggest you have more than enough information available from the free tools to do a similar job, it's more a question of using the information correctly than of getting new/more information.

There's a huge variety of tools out there, some that offer far more functionality than simply kw research. I'm not sure if this is the type of thing you might actually find more use for? Most of the information that can be gained can be achieved using a variety of free tools, but if you prefer to streamline things and place a high value on your own time it might be worth investing in one of the paid tool kits. Having said that, I'm a firm believer in investing your time and money in the people (even if it's simply improving your own knowledge with self learning or paid tuition) rather than investing in tools (no tool will provide you with the 'answers' if you don't know what questions you should be asking).

If you're looking for a good 'all rounder' that's relatively user friendly, I'd probably suggest looking at SEOmoz pro membership to be honest (30 day free trial available if you want to try it out to start with). It's expensive for the paid subsciption, $99 p/month, but even if you just take up the 30 day offer you should be able to learn a lot that would stand to you going forward. There's a good balance there between providing a tool kit and providing information to increase the knowledge of the user(s). You might also want to look at something like Raven, which offers a similar free trial period, and has a much lower cost of entry (although aimed more at SEM professionals than for novices, so not the same focus on the basics there or quite as 'point and click').

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Google keyword tool is best to find out best keywords for your website. You can also use other tool to find out keywords but as we always looking for relevant keyword for our website Google keyword tool is very good...

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Paul do you have an opinion on how much time someone would need to be spending on SEOmoz and their site's SEO in order to make investing in SEOmoz worth their while? For example if someone had say four hours per week to dedicate to their site's SEO, would it be a waste of their money to invest in SEOmoz membership?

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... how much time someone would need to be spending on SEOmoz and their site's SEO in order to make investing in SEOmoz worth their while? For example if someone had say four hours per week to dedicate to their site's SEO, would it be a waste of their money to invest in SEOmoz membership?

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I wouldn't say a "waste of their money", but whether it's good value for money is debatable.

The problem here is that it really depends on the specifics of the situation. If you're selling low volume high value items, the gains which could be achieved by using that four hours per week more effectively could have a very dramatic impact on the bottom line. If it's a high volume low value site (say a forum community like SBC for you or TPF for JP), it's obviously going to produce less of a return relatively speaking (especially as much of the SEO value of a forum comes from the long tail user generated content). It also depends on the experience and knowledge of the individual, as one of the most valuable aspects of the SEOmoz offer is access to the private forums/pro Q&A where superb knowledge is shared across the community. As with any toolset, it only gives you the information if you know what to look for, what questions you need to answer and how to use the information gained to correctly optimise your site. If the person in question has a relatively strong knowledge of the area already (and actively keeps it up to date), something like Raven tools might provide a similar level of efficiency gains at a much lower price of entry. For others, with a relatively limited time budget to invest, working on the information gained through webmaster tools (both google and bing), analytics and some of the free tools available might be more than enough to use up their entire time budget perfectly efficiently.

For someone active in the area (i.e. operating multiple sites) where the knowledge gained, either directly or indirectly, will have a strong lifetime value I'd suggest it's certainly worth considering. At the very least, I'd suggest taking up the 30 day free trial to try it out (although I'd try and pick a month that was relatively quiet so a lot of time could be invested into it). There's also always going to be an element of subjectivity as to which tools someone finds preferable (from a UI/UX pov), so taking up the trials is a great way to see which best suits your needs and you enjoy working with (I find that a lot of users much prefer the SEOmoz offer in terms of ease of use and simplicity, but that's entirely subjective).

So, the roundabout answer, it really depends. Depending on the site in question, the level of ability of the owner and the personal preferences of the owner, they may or may not gain enough value from it to make it worthwhile.

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your brain+Google searc+Google Adwords will be the best recipe
and when you creat the list of keywords try to think like a common user but not like the site owner because people do many mistakes in the very beginning.

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You got great help already by the BAF members. I would like to wish you good luck with your forum.

My suggestion was Google's keyword tool. Perhaps, I mostly trust the instinct with keyword research. Its not necessary to take help of a tool for keyword research. If you can even come up with 5 strong keywords with the help of your instinct those five can make your fortune.

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